The move was caused by the expiration of a license that permitted companies such as Canonical to distribute the package. The ‘good news’ is that Java’s new owner, Oracle, will henceforth be using OpenJDK – the open-source alternative to Java - as the basis for their own future releases.

But as great a move as this was for open-source, OpenJDK is by no means perfect. Many applications, particularly those used in enterprise, don’t play nicely with it, or refuse to run at all.

So one user has stepped up to the plate with a tasty solution for those depending on any part of Sun Java 6 for personal or professional reasons.

Martin Wimpress’ script ’…downloads the Java binary installers from Oracle, builds the .deb packages locally on your computer and then installs them. Packages are compatible with “official” Ubuntu ones and will upgrade Java 6 that was previously installed from packages.’